All posts in "Multimedia Fiction"

Print used to be literature’s default medium: if you wanted to read something, you went to a bookstore or library and bought a printed book. Now, with mobile apps like Device 6 – part fiction, part puzzle game – literature is suddenly opening up new frontiers.

iClassics has released a new digital fiction piece just in time for Halloween. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, adapted from Washington Irving’s 19th century story, retells the classic tale while giving it an interactive twist.

Like in iClassics’ other work, the app is a playful digital anachronism, a hybrid text that straddles two vastly different eras without standing squarely in either one (this is a good thing).

The Shootout is a short story that takes tropes of the Western genre and spins them into a work that merges a romanticized past with today’s digital culture. Its graphics and audio walk that line as well, manipulating conventional imagery and sound using overtly digital methods.

True Legends is a mesmerizing short fiction app for iOS. Its animation-heavy presentation, while being short on length, is nevertheless a successful experiment in exploring how text, music, and user interaction can mesh with artwork effectively.

Simogo’s The Sensational December Machine is a charming fiction piece that delivers a fresh perspective on multimedia storytelling. With a thoughtful short story at its core, the piece essentially takes the concept of a storybook and rethinks it for the digital age.

The iPoe concept is simple: Take well-known stories from one of America’s most beloved writers, and bring them into the 21st century with a mobile app. It’s a wonderful way to revisit Edgar Allan Poe’s writings; and, aesthetically, the app sets a high bar for excellence in commercial multimedia fiction.

Some multimedia pieces use mostly sequential art; others lean towards being text-heavy. Then there are those pieces, like Inanimate Alice, that are true digital fiction hybrids, existing comfortably at the intersection of various media.